Homes taking longer to build

According to new data released by Stats NZ, new homes are taking longer to reach their final inspection than they were in 2021

New homes consented up until the June 2022 quarter have taken an average of 16 months to reach final inspection, up from 14 months in the June 2021 quarter. A further two months are then required to receive a Code Compliance Certificate (CCC), according to the latest information from Stats NZ.

Additionally, homes from June 2022 quarter take around five months to reach their first inspection.

“This increase in building timeframes coincided with a period of building material shortages and high demand for new homes,” said Construction and Property Statistics Manager Michael Heslop.

The data – which measures the time it takes between a home receiving a building consent and a CCC – is from residential builds issued with a consent in the June 2022 quarter. It is the most recently available data to Stats NZ, which covers all new dwellings consented. The data uses information from 25 Building Consent Authorities, covering around 65% of all new dwellings consented and completed.

“This experimental dataset provides an estimate of the number of new homes finished each quarter, based on data from a selection of councils and modelling for those councils whose data is not currently collected,” said Heslop.

The most recently available data on the time between consent and CCC for new stand-alone houses is from the March 2023 quarter. It shows the median length of time to reach a first inspection was around five months – an increase compared to March 2022 quarter, which took around three months to reach first inspection. Of all new homes consented in the March 2023 quarter, 33.6% had reached CCC stage by the time of publication.

18-month build time… for some

For multi-unit homes, data from June 2022 quarter is the most up to date. It showed the median time to issue a CCC was just over 18 months and only 56.8% of homes consented in that quarter had reached CCC stage by April 2024.

Early indications for consents issued in the March 2023 quarter for all new dwellings show a reduction of CCC time as the lower quartile time was 10 months.

The lower quartile is the time it took for one quarter of building consents to reach this milestone, which is useful as an early indicator of what trends might be seen in the median, and as a measure of variation in timeframes.

Data from the June 2022 quarter showed residential alterations also took an average of 18 months to reach CCC stage.

For non-residential consents issued in the March 2022 quarter (the most recent available data) non-residential building work took a median time of 22 months to reach CCC stage, compared to around 16 months for consents issued in the March 2021 quarter.

More CCCs issued

While the most recent timeframe data available is from June 2022, there is more recent data on completed CCCs. An estimated 11,831 completed new dwellings received CCCs in the June 2022 quarter, an increase of 17% compared to the December 2022 quarter. In the year ended December 2023, an estimated 43,160 dwellings received CCCs, an increase of 20% compared with the year ended December 2022.

The September 2023 quarter also saw the estimated number of new dwellings to receive a CCC go past the 40,000 mark, with 41,421.

No confirmed follow up

When asked by Under Construction whether Stats NZ could commit to another Experimental Building Indicators report, Heslop said: “It takes time to establish relationships with data suppliers and there is a multitude of stakeholders involved in the provision of this data. So, at this stage we are unable to commit to further data updates.”

He added that the timing of the publication depends on its workload with other releases.

“The timing of updates to the experimental building indicators dataset is an operational decision. Stats NZ had produced this dataset once before in 2022, but official statistics such as ‘Building consents issued’ and ‘Value of building work put in place’ are our priorities. Another factor that impacts the timing is data supply.”

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